Free The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time by Michael Shapiro

God and God’s law would man overcome his addiction to many gods and waging war. In the great words of Isaiah:
    And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
    And their spears into pruning hooks:
    Nations shall not take up
    Sword against nation;
    They shall never again know war.

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Judas Iscariot
(ca. 4 B. C. E.-ca. 30 C. E.)
    H is very name aroused hatred. It is synonymous with treachery, deceit, and greed. Think of the progression Judas Goat, Judas Kiss, Judah, Jude the Obscure, Judas, Judaism, Jew…
    Some scholars, including the eminent Hyam Maccoby (in his Judas Iscarìot and the Myth of Jewish Evil), believe that Judas the traitor did not exist. Paul himself makes no reference to Judas in the Epistles. It is possible that the character was created by the Pauline Church in Antioch for propaganda purposes. Especially after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. by Titus’s troops, the Pauline Church sought to separate itself from the rebels in Judea and the Jewish Christians once led by Jesus’ brother James. The Gospels were written during and after the Judean War. Roman centurions were made to appear more appealing than the Jewish masses. Borrowing instances of Hellenic anti-Semitism, the authors of the Gospels assumed a pro-Roman stance, denying that Jesus was a rebel against Rome but asserting that he was an opponent of Judaism. To the anti-Semites, Jewish denial of Jesus’ divinity established Jewish guilt in his death by crucifixion.
    The foundation of Christian hate for the Jews was laid in the Gospel According to Saint John. Unlike the earlier Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, John refers to Jesus as divine. Judas is set forth as fundamentally evil, terrifying, and avaricious. For such a divine figure as Jesus to fall, someone almost as divine must bring about his demise: the Black Christ, the Antichrist, Judas, with a full head of red hair, sporting a yellow robe, corrupt treasurer of the Apostles, money bag always in hand, ready (after haggling) to sell his Master for thirty pieces of silver. For those believing in John’s words, Judas was allied with Satan, the fallen archangel. The foul lie of an unholy trinity of Judas-Satan-Jews became implanted in Christian consciousness from the earliest years of the Pauline Church.
    Many pagan religions directly preceding Christianity shared a common theme of the godly figure sacrificed by a closest friend or brother. First by official synods of the Church and later by parish priests and passion plays, Christians were instructed that Judas had betrayed Jesus to the Jewish authorities with a kiss. The Church argued that those authorities then exerted political pressure on the Romans to crucify him. Betrayal by someone Jesus deemed most intimate made all Jews enemies of all men for all time. Through its preaching, the Church emphasized that Jewish resistance in recognizing the Christ symbolized the murder of Jesus over and over again by every Jew in every generation.
    With increasing savagery, Jews were dubbed by Christians a Judas nation, a people basically evil, of negative spirituality and obscene materiality. In religious literature (Saint Jerome, Martin Luther), folklore (the Judas myth), drama (Passion, Easter, and morality plays, Shakespeare’s Shylock and Iago), and literature (Dickens’ Fagin), the Judas character became the emblem of the demon Jew. Jewish people were characterized as stinking (Jewish stench), grotesquely shaped and lecherous (with grossly enlarged sexual organs ready to rape), homeless (the Wandering Jew), sadistic vampires (the ritual killing of children for their blood), scapegoats (horns protruding from their foreheads), treacherous (Alfred Dreyfus), usurers (never bankers), Satanic (wearing pointed hats), and unclean (Judaism as a filthy sow sucked by Hebrew piglets).
    Judas Iscariot’s name is full of meanings. “Iscariot” is close to the Latin sicarius, which means “dagger man.” Judas is